


The Granite Tower

by TajaReyul



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:04:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TajaReyul/pseuds/TajaReyul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years have passed since Voldemort's defeat.  Six years in which Harry Potter has slept a self-imposed, enchanted sleep.  Now Luna Lovegood plans to rescue him from his tower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Granite Tower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shiksha (Sixxy) Rajman](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Shiksha+%28Sixxy%29+Rajman).



Luna studied the ruins of Ravenclaw Tower before her. Only two towers were left of the four that used to anchor the corners of Hogwarts Castle. The Owlery was gone and largely unlamented. Most of the owls preferred the grove of trees behind the abandoned ruins of Hagrid's cottage anyway. The Aerie was sorely missed, however. Generations of Ravenclaws had whispered their secrets to the walls, infusing the very stones with bits of knowledge from the trivial to the portentious. The sight of the crumbled foundations, like the root of a broken tooth, pained her, so she turned resolutely away. What she sought wasn't there.

Gryffindor Tower still stood, after a fashion. It had separated from the main body of the castle and sunk half its height crookedly into the ground. An aura of power hung about the precarious structure and Luna knew if she stepped within its range, she'd spend the rest of the day wandering aimlessly, thinking herself lost in a maze of hedges. Students who ventured too close to that corner of the castle were often found meandering dazedly through the corridors hours later. Her first challenge was to find a way past the Repelling Charm.

Luna knew from others' attempts to gain entrance that the area of effect extended twenty feet all around and above the tower. That left only underground, and since the tower was assumed to be inaccessible from the castle, it was just possible that the lowest levels might be exempt from the spell. She picked her way along the outer bailey of the castle until she came to a break in the wall and entered the castle through what was once Professor Binns' classroom. Lighting her wand, she pulled a battered piece of parchment out of her knapsack. She unfolded it and touched the tip of her wand to the blank page.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” she intoned.

Ink spread out from the spot where wand and parchment met, forming a map of the castle. Luna waited a few minutes while the Marauders' Map adjusted to show the castle's new dimensions. She had to find a way into the part of Gryffindor Tower that was underground. It looked like the best way was around the Hufflepuff common room. Like any proper maze, the correct path was the most indirect one. Luna set off with unusually single-minded determination. No one stopped her even though she was five years out of Hogwarts. Every day of those five years she breathed she owed to the Boy Who Lived. It was high time somebody rescued Harry Potter from his tower.

Luna didn't blame him for retreating from the world. The fame he'd alternately enjoyed and suffered through was bad enough. Layer on top of that the fact that he'd finally killed Voldemort, in the process losing friends and his last remaining father figure as well as the love of his life, well, Luna didn't think she'd have held onto her sanity. Not that many people actually thought she was sane, of course, even fewer thought so when she announced her intentions to bring Harry back.

Backtracking and detouring around collapsed corridors, she finally came to a pile of rubble that she couldn't get around. The only passage to Gryffindor Tower lay on the other side. Luna folded up the Map and tucked it in her pocket in case she needed it later. She pulled a spelunker's helmet with headlamp out of her bag, lit the bespelled candle and fixed the helmet on her head. Slowly, patiently, she played the light over the pile of debris. It wouldn't do to just blast her way through. The light would show her where it was safe to dig and where the rubble supported this corner of the castle.

She carefully used her wand to shift rock and dirt until she could worm her way through. Eventually, she had to set her wand aside and dig with her hands before she broke through to the other side. She took a moment to get her bearings, put away the spelunker's helmet and retrieved her wand from where she'd stuck it in her sock.

“ _Lumos._ ” She lit her wand and held it up. The wandlight revealed that the Black Lake had flooded here. To get to Gryffindor Tower, she'd have to swim. Luna checked all her gear so make sure it was secure and wouldn't float away when she entered the lake. The water was so cold it took her breath away. She stood in waist-deep water until her teeth stopped chattering before carefully moving forward. Holding her wand just under the surface, she made her way deeper and closer to where the Map said the base of the Tower now resided.

At the twenty-foot boundary, she paused and, taking her courage in both hands, stepped past it. When she realized that the Repelling Charm held no sway here, she let out the breath she'd been holding. Luna found the opening to the old Gryffindor common room. The portrait that used to guard the door had been removed at some point in the past, something for which she was grateful. Not only would it have been a shame for the Fat Lady to have been ruined by water damage, the fact that she didn't have the password was the first anticipated obstacle she hadn't had any idea how to overcome.

Casting a Bubble-head Charm, Luna ducked under the surface of the Black Lake and swam through the doorway. The charm let her breathe naturally as she glided through the common room. She supposed it had been very comfortable before it flooded. Now, no fire could burn in the hearth and the furniture was all tipped over and waterlogged. The tapestries were growing algae and some sort of shade-loving aquatic plant. Neville would know what it was, but to her it was just another water weed.

She had to swim halfway up the left-hand stairs to the original second floor. Sitting on a step well above the high water mark, Luna gave her wand a little wiggle to produce a stream of warm air that she used to dry her hair and clothes. Her shoes still squished uncomfortably but she didn't want to take the time needed to dry them out completely. She didn't imagine that there would be no further obstacles and Harry had waited quite long enough, in her opinion, to be rescued.

On the landing between the third and fourth floors, a curtain of purple fire blocked the way. Luna cast a Flame-Freezing Charm and attempted to walk through the flame, but it was still hot enough to drive her back down a couple of steps. She tried a couple of the Extinguishing Charms that Charlie Weasley had taught her for putting out dragonfire fueled blazes. The Charms had no appreciable effect on the purple flames. She leaned against the wall, cradling her blistered hand and thought. The more she thought, the angrier she got. Finally, she pointed her wand down the stairs and called, “ _Accio_ tapestry!”

The weed-choked and algae-slimed wall hanging flew towards her, dripping lakewater. She stood away from the wall and let it smack into her and envelop her slight form. She stumbled up the steps, fell through the curtain of flame, and then immediately shrugged off the tapestry before the magical fire could superheat the soaked fabric and steam her alive. A wisp of water vapour curled up from the sole of one shoe as she kicked her way out of the last clinging fold. Luna scrambled up the rest of the way to the fourth floor before stopping to catch her breath.

Nothing else barred her way until she got to the entrance to the seventh-floor dormitory. The door itself stood open, hanging crookedly, half off its hinges. Luna carefully pushed the door all the way open to see flowers growing everywhere, filling the room to the brim. There were poppies and daffodils and lilies, thyme and verbena and agrimony. An elder tree and a linden tree grew just inside, their branches intertwining over the door. Passion flower and honeysuckle vines crawled up the bedposts and walls. There was wormwood and asphodel and sopophorus bean and more plants and flowering herbs than she could name. A carpet of lily-of-the-valley wended its way around the beds with their rotting and dusty hangings. It led to the bed over by the window, the farthest one from the door, where Harry Potter lay sleeping.

Luna felt drowsy, just looking at him. No, wait. The scents of the flowers were blending together to make a sleeping potion. It was subtle, but Luna was no stranger to subtlety. Raising her wand once again, she whipped up a wind to blow in from the open windows on the lower floors up the stairwell and out through the room where Harry slept. She crossed to his bedside quickly. The flowers' scents would combine again, but not right away. Luna bent and kissed his immobile lips. Sometimes the Muggle fairy tales had it right.

He stirred and his eyes fluttered open. It took three tries before he managed to choke out her name as a question.

"You're slept long enough, Harry," she said with a smile. "Come with me now." 

She helped him stand and they slowly made their way to the door. Luna was pleased to note that flowers wilted in their wake, and the leaves on the linden by the door were yellowing and falling to the floor. The elder flowers fell, green berries quickly formed and then just as rapidly turned black.

Luna and Harry stumbled their way down to the fourth floor. The door had warped and swollen in the frame and she had to blast a hole in it to get through. Kicking the wreckage and other debris aside, she pulled him along behind her with a sense of urgency. She wasn't sure if Harry's unconscious magic had kept Gryffindor Tower standing these past five years or not. It would be such a waste if she'd gone to all that effort to rescue him, only for both of them to perish when the tower crumbled and fell on them.

The windows were all broken, some more completely than others. Luna chose the one that had the least glass left and cleaned the remaining shards with a gesture of her wand. She climbed out the now-empty casement and turned back to offer Harry her hand. He stood there, blinking in the bright light that streamed in the window.

"Harry," she said firmly, "you told me once that Professor Dumbledore said that it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

He turned his unfocused green gaze on her, and for a moment his eyes blazed with a terrifying rage. Luna met his regard calmly, hand still outstretched. Harry reached for her slowly. She caught his hand in a tight grip as soon as their fingers touched, but he climbed out the window of his own volition.


End file.
